Failed marriages a blight on humanity

January 13, 2009|By Steve Guthrie Courier Columnist

It’s a sad sight, a sorry state of affairs.

The parade of failed marriages continues marching through our community.

It is particularly frustrating for a counselor, because too often the couples who come to counseling wait until things have gotten so bad that one has already given up. And once a husband or wife has crossed that line there’s seemingly nothing left to do with that marriage but fill out the death certificate.

When we sit and reconstruct what went wrong I find a predictable pattern that unfolds in six steps.

In the first step, one or the other begins to behave differently in a way that brings tension into the union. It might be a flirtatious wife, a husband gambling away his paycheck, or either of them becoming so argumentative as to border on emotional abuse.

Throw in a pinch of financial stress in the family budget, plus a dash of poor communications, and you have a recipe for a marriage in distress.

Advertisement

Now at step two, tension builds until tears, accusations, and slamming doors become the norm in the household.

Husbands and wives become like strangers. Common goals, and even common courtesy, fall by the wayside.

At this point, if this marriage was a body in so much physical pain someone would take it to a doctor, maybe even the emergency room.

People seem to have an amazing capacity to endure emotional pain, and those who would rush to the ER for a hangnail will live with heartache, sorrow, and depression until their marriage is mush.

At step three in our predictable pattern, the spouse whose behavior did not change becomes alarmed.

They see where this is heading, and it frightens them. They begin to sound the alarm bell with their wavering spouse, but because the quality and quantity of meaningful communication is so poor what is meant as a warning comes across as an accusation.

The spouse whose behavior changed digs in, levels a few accusations of their own, and makes it clear they don’t see a problem.

“Get over it” is their attitude, and the clear message is they are not going to inconvenience themselves in the least in the interest of marital health.

Somewhere in step three the concerned spouse begs the wavering spouse to go with them to counseling or to visit with their pastor. That overture is often rejected out-of-hand. Counselors and pastors are judgmental and might ask me to stop what I’m doing, reasons the wavering spouse. And besides, counselors cost money. I know you’re upset, they tell the concerned spouse, but things aren’t that bad.

Their comes a point in the escalation of tension that one or the other of them begins to think life without that difficult spouse might be better than going on living in a war zone. That’s step four.

Depending on the nature of the behavior change, they begin to think in terms of protecting themselves. For example, the wife of a man suddenly gambling away their retirement savings and the kid’s college fund begins to think in terms of getting out before their financial house crashes around her ears.

They quickly rationalize that it would be better for the children to be raised in a peaceful single parent home than in a battleground.

So they take step five. They give up, and go into self-preservation mode. They see an attorney, whose hourly fee is about three times what they would have paid the counselor to save the marriage, and begin the legal maneuvering to draw a line in the sand marking the beginning of the end.

Next thing you know it’s step six, and light bulbs are popping on above the head of the wavering spouse who did not want to invest in saving the marriage. Yikes, this must be serious, they suddenly realize, and this has the potential to cost me a lot of money.

They suddenly see themselves working two jobs to pay child support and living in a little apartment.

And suddenly, they don’t want to lose their marriage. What to do? ‘Honey,’ they ask, ‘is it too late to go to counseling?’

The sad reality is it probably is too late. Typically, the newly enlightened spouse sits in my office highly motivated to do whatever it takes to salvage the union. They weep, they beg, they bargain.

But from my chair I see the emptiness in the eyes of the spouse who has given up. Somewhere deep in their heart a switch has been flipped and the lights are out on this marriage.

They have come to counseling not to try any heroic measure to save their union, but to have me tell their spouse it’s all over.